Inspirational Women of the Year Awards: After her own harrowing ordeal, Heather devoted her life to making critical care wards a friendlier place for patients - and their families

The Daily Mail is proudly running our seventh Inspirational Women of the Year Awards, in association with British Gas and the charity Shelter.

We want you to nominate the special women who deserve to be recognised. Here, we tell the story of another of our remarkable nominees.

When Heather Parsons booked a skiing trip in March 2002, it should have been the holiday of a lifetime.

But for her and seven-year-old son Will, it set in motion a series of events that were both unexpected and frightening.

On their travels Heather, a single mother, caught an infection that left her clinging for life in intensive care.

'When I woke after two weeks in a medically induced coma, all I could think of was my son,' she says.

'I didn't know where he was. I tried to shout Will's name, but I had a tube down my throat. I fought the nurses and tried to tear the tubes out. The terror of not being able to speak, and not knowing what had happened, will stay with me for ever.'

Heather's body had been ravaged by the flesh-eating bug necrotising fasciitis, which had eaten into her buttocks, thigh and calf. She also suffered a cardiac arrest and kidney failure and underwent 15 operations - an experience which created deep mental scars.

'When I left hospital six weeks later, my battle had only just started,' she says and she now devotes her time to helping other patients and their families find a way through the emotional trauma of a spell in intensive care - even developing a smartphone app for the desperately ill.

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'I had recurring nightmares for eight years which left me weeping and exhausted,' she says. 'I also had terrifying flashbacks and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. But seeking the right counselling was hard and only basic counselling was funded by the NHS.'

So she researched the experiences of other former intensive care patients and found her case was far from uncommon. Indeed, a report published in the journal Critical Care earlier this year showed that 44 per cent were significantly anxious or depressed a year after being discharged.

Always a ready smile: Heather Parsons is a volunteer in ICU and counsels patients and their families

For Heather the light-bulb moment came three years ago, when she went back to visit the intensive care unit at Southampton General Hospital, where she'd been treated.

A nurse mentioned that patients and their families desperately needed help coping with the emotional impact of their experiences, but there weren't the resources.

Heather came up with the idea of a charity support group which would offer tea and time, as well as counselling and regular meetings for patients and their families. She went to the hospital with the idea, and they agreed to try it.

Two years ago, armed with tea bags, biscuits and a warm smile, Heather returned to her old ward. 'Just walking back in made me shake uncontrollably. I saw the bed I had been in, and I actually wept. It really hit home that my own life had changed for ever,' she says.

'But there was work to be done. There were families sitting in the waiting room outside intensive care, desperately anxious and worried, and other families stumbling into the room after being told their loved ones were dying.

'The mixture of grief, fear and shock was overwhelming. There was nobody there to just sit with them and listen, or liaise with the staff. One girl had just seen her father, covered in tubes, after a car crash. She was shaking in a corner, like an injured animal.

'Her mother was inside the ward, but for this 15-year-old girl, the waiting room was the loneliest place in the world. I asked the nurses for an update on her father, and sat and chatted. The relief of just being told what was happening was written all over her face.

'Then a man in his 70s almost fell into the family room after being told his wife was dying. With tears in his eyes and he kept saying: “It's our 50th anniversary and we've planned this lovely party together. Now she's not going to make it.”

'I took his hand and listened.'

'Just walking back in made me shake
uncontrollably. I saw the bed I had been in, and I actually wept. It
really hit home that my own life had changed for ever.'

Patients can take up to a year to recover from physical trauma, but psychological trauma can remain for life, says Fiona Hall, the senior sister on the intensive care unit at Southampton.

'Heather instinctively knows who is struggling, and her kindness just envelops them.'

The help she offers has come at some personal cost. To launch her charity, Where There's A Will, Heather re-mortgaged her house and left her £30,000-a-year education advisory job to volunteer, without pay, at the unit.

Since then, through her tireless cake sales and sponsored walks, she has raised £30,000 to fund specialist physiotherapy and counselling for former patients and their families, launched a monthly support group and weekly keep fit group.

She has bought an iPad for the ward, and working with son Will, has developed an app - now being used at the hospital - which allows patients who can't speak to communicate.

Heather, 52, says: 'I remembered the agony of not being able to ask about Will. So when we developed the app, we chose a list of questions that patients can click on, asking about loved ones or what has happened to them.

'There's a pain indicator, where they can point to a graphic of a body to show where they feel pain, and then point to different descriptions of the pain - how bad it is, if they need more medication, if the sensation is stabbing or throbbing.' Heather's innovative app has unlocked desperately ill patients from a world of silence and fear - a nightmare she remembers only too well.

Patients have also needed other kinds of support. 'I was called to the unit because one lady in her 60s was having panic attacks,' says Heather. 'It turned out she had fallen ill on holiday in Europe, and had been tied to her bed in critical care, which is a common practice in some countries.

'She was totally traumatised, so I paid for specialist counselling.'

Many patients become delusional, a common reaction to the powerful medication needed in intensive care, and think the medical staff are trying to hurt them. On seeing unfamiliar faces, some older people think they are back in the war.

'If someone is like this, I reassure them the reactions are part of the medication,' says Heather. 'I'm a trained counsellor, but through my charity I pay for trauma therapists and specialist private physiotherapists to help patients piece their lives together again.'

Clinging for life: While on holiday, Heather caught a flesh-eating bug and had to undergo 15 operations - a harrowing experience

One of those who's benefited from Heather's kindness is Jean Hooper. The 32-year-old from Basingstoke had just dropped her young daughter off at football training two years ago when she had a cardiac arrest.

'I remember going to a cafe and then I woke in Southampton General Hospital two weeks later. I had collapsed and onlookers had kept me alive with CPR,' says Jean.

'I was so confused that I thought patients around me were eating dog food. It was only when I arrived home on December 23 that the shock hit me. I couldn't work, drive or go Christmas shopping for my daughter Tia, who was then nine. I struggled with my memory, my co-ordination was poor and my left hand weak.

Last March, I joined Heather's support group and found other people who'd been through the same thing. Heather arranged for me to have private physiotherapy on my hand - paid for by her charity - which meant I could go back to work as a hairdresser.

'By this January, my old bubbly confidence had returned. Heather really helped me find myself again - with endless cups of tea and that lovely smile which never fades.'

Fiona Hall adds: 'Members of staff also ask to have a cup of tea with her, because when you are under terrific pressure, it's great to have a pair of twinkling eyes and a warm reassuring smile.

'Volunteers like Heather are a mainstay in hospitals. They do extraordinary work, for no financial reward, out of the goodness of their own hearts. How amazing is this?

'Many patients come back to thank us, and they almost all mention “the lady with the tea”. She has a real impact on their lives.'

Heather now works part-time as a tutor to pay her bills, and goes straight from work every afternoon to do an unpaid four-hour shift at the hospital. She says with a smile: 'I call myself the tea lady, because that's what I do.'

With that, this humble, selfless and extraordinary woman is off to brew another cup - and ease another stranger through their darkest hour.

Nominate YOUR Inspirational Women: Here's how to do it

Click hereto fill in an online form online telling us - in no more than 400 words - why you think your candidate should win

Or click here
to print off the form. Fill it in and tell us in no more than 400 words
- using a separate sheet - why you think your candidate should win.
Post your nomination to: Inspirational Women of the Year Awards c/o Femail, Daily Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT

Or email inspirationalwomen@dailymail.co.ukwith
your name, your tel no, your address, your nomination and their tel no,
and tell us in no more than 400 words why you think your candidate
should win.

The closing date for entries is midnight on Saturday 5th October 2013. The Editor's decision is final.